Naxos Video Library (review)

For information regarding the scope of this column, consult the headnote in the September 2010 issue (p. 164 of this volume). The dates of access for each review of an online source indicate the dates during which the reviewer was evaluating the resource. All Web sites were last accessed to verify availability on 24 September 2010.

Introduced in 2009, Naxos Video Library (hereafter NVL) provides over 300 (as of January 2010) individual musical performances on streaming video. As might be expected, many of these are opera performances, but NVL also includes a number of concert videos and ballets. Also included are a small number of feature films (currently all foreign and non-English language films), jazz performances, musical documentaries and Naxos's own Musical Journeys video series. The video offerings are often the same (although not all are included) as the DVDs Naxos offers for sale in their monthly New Release Guide. Not surprisingly, NVL closely matches in genre and theme that of the Naxos Music Library.

This model of selection and sale differs from NVL's primary competitor in this market, Opera in Video, which is offered by Alexander Street Press. As Naxos is both a producer and a distributor of music, a large portion of both NVL and the Naxos Music Library consists of titles that Naxos owns rather than licenses. One assumption to consider about this model is that the content that Naxos offers could be deemed more stable (in the sense of whether the content purchased today will still be there tomorrow) than that of Alexander Street Press, which only acts as a distributor. Since it is fairly obvious that the recording industry at large is still suspicious of digital content and how it can be distributed—and more importantly, protected (especially with video content)—any library purchasing products such as NVL must not assume that they have satisfied all of their collection development needs in this area with such an acquisition. While many predict the demise of both the CD and the DVD, purchasing these formats is still a necessity for most libraries and acquiring purely digital content can only be considered an adjunct.

Content

As of this review, NVL currently consists of over five hundred performances on video from eighteen different labels (Arthaus, Dacapo, Dynamic, Medici Arts, Opus Arte, TDK, to name a few). As one would expect, Western art music comprises the majority of the offerings. A product like Naxos Video Library lives or dies by two things: content and its searching/navigating features. Currently, the content offered in NVL is lacking. Licensing performances for streaming in such a product is difficult at best, but to make the content included in NVL truly valuable to one of its major customers (libraries), NVL will require some significant enhancements. For example, in addition to the obvious benefit of multiple users having simultaneous access to the same title, one of the major advantages of a streaming video library of music is the ability to choose several performances of the same work for comparison. Software is provided exactly for this purpose. For pedagogical purposes, a user wants to compare and contrast the same scene or aria from an opera side by side; a task that would be difficult, if not impossible using DVDs. But the product must first provide those several performances in order to make the comparison.

In the current NVL, only about half of the operas have more than one performance available. Of those operas, most offer only two performances (although curiously, there are five performances of Macbeth!). In addition, those that offer more than one performance are not necessarily the most critical titles. Three performances of Maria Stuarda but only one of il Trovatore? NVL also suffers from not providing enough of the standard opera repertoire in general. For example, Strauss' Capriccio and Daphne are...